Bake Sale Goodies!

Chocolate Fudge with Meringue

Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream

Supergirl’s school is having their annual end-of-year summer celebration fun fair at school and I was “volunteered” to contribute to the bake sale! Nothing says bake sale to me like cupcakes. I must admit to being a little sleepy on Thursday night when I made the Chocolate Fudge with Meringue icing cupcakes and I completely forgot to take pictures, until the very end. Don’t they look tasty though?

The Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream icing I did a better job and had my camera charged and ready to go!

First step before we start mixing anything is to get the cupcake trays lined and ready to go

Notice the party polka dots?

An optional step is to double line the cupcake liners with the most colorful on the outside and a neutral color on the inside. This will prevent the cake mixture from soaking through and making the party polka dots invisible.

Quickly scroll back to the beginning and check out the difference with the liners between the chocolate and vanilla. The vanilla is double-lined while the chocolate is not. Big difference, eh?

Also, another optional step is to spray the liners with a cooking spray like Pam or something to prevent the cake mixture from sticking to the liners.

I don’t know about you but I hate when I am eating a cupcake and I peel back the paper and half the cupcake peels off with it! This will prevent that.

OK, so, cupcake pans and liners are ready to go, set them aside and let’s get mixing.

First off, get a BIG bowl and put all the dry ingredients in it

Doesn’t look like much I know but that is all-purpose flour, cake flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Next, you need to mix it all together. This is where a really nice Kitchen Aide stand mixer would come in handy but sadly I don’t have one, just an overworked hand mixer. If you use a hand mixer use it on low as there is no liquid to hold all these together and it will explode if you crank it on high (not that I have done that or anything….)

Cut the butter up into small cubes and put it into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix it just until the butter is covered in the flour mixture.

Now it is time to get the wet ingredients ready. In a 4 cup measuring cup put the eggs, vanilla and milk and whisk them together.

It looks better once it is all mixed. Now comes the magic! Mix the wet and dry together. Pour the wet into the dry in three stages, scraping the sides of the bowl in-between each addition.

The mix will get THICK at this point (it actually pulled the mixers right out on me) and you do not want to mix it too much, just until all the ingredients are combined.

Get the prepared cupcake pans and pour about 1/4 cup of mix into each cup, this should fill each cup about 3/4 full. Actually, this mix doesn’t pour, it is so thick it more just glops out of the cup, I needed to spoon it out. Contrast this to the Chocolate Fudge mix which poured easily (of course you will have to take my word on this because there are no pics of the Chocolate Fudge mix, sorry!).

Pop these into a 350 oven for about 20 minutes or so, and they will puff up nicely. You know they are done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Put the pans aside to cool completely and you can make the buttercream icing while they are cooling.

So would this be the cast of characters, the sequel? the minor players?

Make sure the butter is at room temperature and use your mixer to cream it until it is nice and fluffy. Add in the milk and icing sugar, and mix on high. Add sugar until the desired consistency is reached.

Once it is all mixed use a spatula to spread on top and decorate! Off to the bake sale!!

VANILLA CUPCAKES

1 3/4 cups cake flour (not self-rising)

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

4 eggs

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

BUTTERCREAM ICING

1 cup butter at room temperature

6 – 8 cups confectioner’s sugar

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

** I found this recipe here, along with a LOT of other awesome looking cupcake recipes